Secret Police Files Found
cbsnews.com
(CBS) U.S. Marines have uncovered an underground vault containing the detailed files of Saddam Hussein's secret police.
Under the headquarters of the Special Security Organization, run by Saddam's most trusted son, Qusay, the Marines found a massive complex of offices over an area the size of two football fields, littered with millions of documents — detailed records that stretch back more than three decades.
[...]
In its 2002 annual report, the human rights organization Amnesty International said that Iraq employed systemic torture.
"Common methods of physical torture included electric shocks or cigarette burns to various parts of the body, pulling out of fingernails, rape, long periods of suspension by the limbs from either a rotating fan in the ceiling or from a horizontal pole, beating with cables, hosepipe or metal rods, and falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet)," the report read.
"In addition, detainees were threatened with rape and subjected to mock execution. They were placed in cells where they could hear the screams of others being tortured and were deliberately deprived of sleep." |
